Flann O’Brien: Shameless Hijack

We will come clean this week, and enlighten the readership as to how the name Blather was arrived at when naming this vitriolic vessel of the various.

The original Blather was the title of a short-lived Dublin monthly periodical, published in 1934 by one Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien or Myles na gCopaleen (1911-66). Devoted to the absurd and the satirical, Blather purported to be (amongst many other things) ‘The Only Paper Exclusively Dedicated to Clay-Pigeon Shooting in Ireland’. In his brother Ciarán Ó Nualláin’s The Early Life of Brian O’Nolan – Flann O’Brian – Myles na gCopaleen, we find an extract from the Editor’s introduction in the first issue:

Earlier emissions of Blather are guilty of unnecessary worry – Blather HQ is not, as was thought, sitting atop a mass grave of some 300 Croppies of the 1798 Rebellion, according to a November 30th letter to the Irish Times from one Aengus Ã“ Snodaigh, of Dublin ’98 Commemoration Committee. It is indeed thought to be at the original location, in front of Collins Barracks, where a recent archaeological search (and not a dig, whatever the difference is) located no bodies. That puts the kibosh on Blather’s theories concerning the finding of a human skull by the Wellington Memorial (as mentioned in the Irish Times, Friday June 19th 1998).

kibosh/kybosh[noun, derivative disputed but possibly from Irish caipÃ­n bÃ¡is, cap of death, or pitch cap, as employed by British forces against 1798 insurgents; verbal usage other origin and not general Hiberno-English].

Final destructive action/utterance, as in ‘put the kibosh on’ [verbal
phrase].

Writer, photographer, environmental campaigner and "known troublemaker" Dave Walsh is the founder of Blather.net, described both as "possibly the most arrogant and depraved website to be found either side of the majestic Shannon River", and "the nicest website circulating in Ireland". Half Irishman, half-bicycle. He lives in southern Irish city of Barcelona.